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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
A 12-year-old collected 30,000 diapers for families in needShe noticed one empty shelf. Then she filled a truck.
A 12-year-old named Sloan collected 30,000 diapers for Nourish Phoenix this year, arriving at the Arizona food bank in a full U-Haul truck that left staff scratching their heads. It was the fifth annual Diaper Drive she has run since she was 7. This year's target was 22,500. The Huggies and Pampers kept coming until there was barely room to walk in her house. The idea started when Sloan volunteered at Nourish Phoenix and noticed a bare stretch of shelving. She asked why. Diapers, she was told, are among the most requested items, and they had already run out. "If we have the ability to give someone something that they might not have or need, it's really important to do that," she told ABC 15. Her mother put it more simply. "She's just so special, she has such a big heart, loves helping and giving back." Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Good News Network
800 villagers now photograph the wildlife they once huntedThey used to hunt the birds. Now they photograph them.
More than 800 villagers across West Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, now earn money photographing wildlife they once hunted. The program, called KehatiKu and run by the consultancy Borneo Futures, pays participants in nine villages for pictures and audio recordings of animals, with a villager earning up to $200 a month and more for rare species. Since it began, contributions have produced 378,000 confirmed observations, including the Critically Endangered Bornean orangutan. "People have started to realize that where previously they caught one bird and it was worth 50,000 rupiah, now they just need to take a photo, send it to us, and they can receive a payment of 5,000 to 10,000 rupiah," said Borneo Futures Indonesia director Nardiyono. Imelda, a 72-year-old farmer in Labian, walks into the woods with friends every day hoping to photograph an orangutan, the top prize. Next month, two more villages join. The gibbons have not agreed to pose. Read the full story → | |||
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KINDNESS • Upworthy
Two students turned wine bottles into a coast that's disappearingA city with no glass recycling. Two students and a machine.
Two Tulane University seniors sharing a bottle of wine in 2020 realized that New Orleans, a city famous for its bars and breweries, had no way to recycle glass. Every empty bottle went to a landfill, and a single one in a recycling bin could get the whole thing rejected. Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz decided to fix it. They started Glass Half Full in a fraternity backyard with a machine that crushed one bottle at a time. Donations poured in from residents who had been quietly hoarding their empties for years. The operation now processes thousands of bottles a day, grinding them into fine sand. After researchers confirmed the material was safe, the company began using it to rebuild the wetlands and barrier islands protecting Louisiana's eroding coast, including projects with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe. The company has diverted millions of pounds of glass from landfills, giving a disappearing shoreline something to hold onto. Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Positive News
From 25 wildfires to zero in two yearsThe country had its worst fire season ever. These communities had none.
Wildfires across 45 Indigenous communities along Peru's Ene River dropped from 25 in 2023 to zero in 2025, according to the Paamari programme, a collaboration between the Central Ash\u00e1ninka of the Ene River and the charity Cool Earth. The name comes from the Ash\u00e1ninka word for fire. When smoke rises near Osherato, it is often Romer Quentimari Garcia who spots it. He is a certified brigadista, trained with satellite imagery and radio systems, and he checks each plume to see whether it is a wildfire or a controlled burn. The programme launched in 2023 and pairs high-tech monitoring with generations of local knowledge. The area burned fell from 2,648 hectares to 492 in a single year, an 81% reduction. Peru had recorded more than 10,000 fires in its worst season on record two years ago. "We are the ones who take care of the forest," Quentimari Garcia says.
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DELIGHT • Smithsonian Magazine
This nickel-sized turtle hatched with two heads, both thrivingTwo heads, one nickel of weight. The left one has opinions.
A diamondback terrapin hatched on Cape Cod this summer with four legs, a patterned shell and two heads. Volunteers with the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary found it at a protected nesting site and brought it to the Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on September 17. It weighed 5.2 grams, about as much as a nickel. The condition, called bicephaly, happens when an embryo starts to split into twins and never fully separates. Veterinarians say the hatchling is swimming and eating normally, and the two heads are not identical in temperament. "The left head has the bigger personality," said Zak Mertz, CEO of the New England Wildlife Centers. Lead vet tech Robyn Rohm noted the same head was "biting the day he came in." It is the third two-headed terrapin the center has cared for in six years. Once it grows, CT scans will show how its anatomy is arranged inside the shell. Read the full story → | |||
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THE HONEYMAP
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With love, The Editor
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